A Home is not a Home
by Jessahme Wren
Summary: AU S8. Oneshot. Jack and Renee spend their first Christmas together.


This is in response to a Christmas Challenge at 24nmore dot com. Hope you enjoy!

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Renee slid a finger beneath the taut bindings, just a touch, enough to feel the satiny cool of the wrapping paper beneath the pads of her fingers before withdrawing. She wriggled her digits under again, but the velvet bow was perfectly tied and it held thusly. She frowned. Jack was a perfectionist, of course, and it was no surprise to Renee that any present he "secured" would have an impenetrable perimeter.

All she wanted was a peek, after all, a covert look at what might be encased within the medium-sized box, but the present was wrapped so as to preclude any hope of unwrapping and repairing without Jack finding out. She held it in her hands, a tantalizing goblet of forbidden wine, and contemplated a sip. She gave it a little experimental shake.

"What are you doing?"

She could hear the smile in his voice before she turned around, but the intrusion into her illicit investigative activities had startled her so completely that she jumped a little from her sitting position beneath the tree. Renee turned to her side, expertly sliding the curious present back into its rightful place.

"Dammit Jack, you shouldn't sneak up on people like that." Her heart thundered in her chest, and as much as she loved seeing him standing there, she really wished he would've stayed in the kitchen and not have interrupted her ongoing investigation.

But she could never really be tired of seeing him, not with so much life and history constantly conspiring against them, and their relationship so new. He stood there in the doorway of the kitchen, propped casually against the frame, in a cable knit sweater and the jeans he wore only at home. His ankles were crossed, and the toes of one bare foot dug into the carpet for purchase. He was holding a cup of coffee.

"And you never answered my question," he said, making his way across the room to where she sat beneath the tree. He liberated himself of the coffee on a nearby end table and extended a hand to fold up beside her. "You wouldn't be shaking presents, now would you, Ms. Walker?"

Renee's frown deepened, but she said nothing. She pursed her lips, rolled her eyes evasively. It worked for Chloe, after all. He leaned closer to her ear. "You know what Santa does to bad little girls who peek before he comes."

She laughed at that, reveling in the electricity that sparked between them at times like this, and playfully pushed at the firm plane of his shoulder. "Well, I'm not afraid of Santa or anyone else," she said huffily. Jack smiled and kissed her anyway, pressing his lips beneath her ear, motionless and delicate, and then wickedly nipping at the tender flesh of her neck. He grinned mischievously.

"Do you want a present?"

She thought she might be getting one soon, actually, with so much attention being lavished upon that spot below her right ear, but then she caught his meaning. She brightened at the new thought, the rush of excitement from his contact now being coaxed into another channel, quite different yet almost as thrilling.

Renee looked at him quizzically through her thick lashes. "Shouldn't we wait though? It's still a week until Christmas."

Jack looked at her, at where she sat gazing up at their small Christmas tree, the one she'd wanted. "That one there, the Charlie Brown one," Jack had heard her tell the man at the tree lot, only to have her have to explain the allusion to him later.

They'd only been seeing each other a few months now, but it was their first Christmas together, and she'd said that it had to be commemorated by a tree. Of course he'd complied, would've complied had that request been a tank of piranha or a singing cactus, just to see her like this.

She had worn no makeup today, and the light smatterings of freckles that usually peeked from beneath a smooth ivory visage now dusted the gentle arc of her cheekbones and spread themselves brightly along her nose, making her look far younger but just as lovely. The lights from the tree, coupled by a few refractory shapes from the brightly colored ornaments that adorned the evergreen branches, swathed her face in sparks of light, and she was as beautiful as any of those decorations and far more precious.

He looked at her genuinely as she sat cross-legged beside him, shoulders relaxed, and considered. "What do we have to wait for, Renee," he said seriously.

She didn't have an answer for that. They'd both been to hell and had fought their way back. They were well, finally. They were happy, and when they weren't they had each other. Not like before.

"Nothing." Her voice was just as serious as his, but there was wonderment as she looked at him, as if realizing something for the first time. There was nothing to wait for, no reason to deny themselves anything any longer. There were lifetimes of punishment and self-recrimination between them, and both she and Jack had a lot of catching up to do.

He smiled. "So which one do you want?" He looked at the few brightly wrapped packages beneath the tree and, without waiting for a reply, found one without a name.

"Here," he said lightly, "I think this one's for you."

She looked at it. It was the package from before, the one he'd caught her shaking, the one she'd wedged into the branches when Jack had surprised her. She took the tastefully wrapped present into her lap and smoothed her hands along the sides of it. The flecks of metallic in the blue and gold plaid paper shone in the warm light of the living room, and the velvet bow gleamed richly. She grabbed one end of the ribbon and gave it a gentle tug. The previously obstinate decoration relented easily to this simple gesture, and the bow, wrapping and tissue paper were all soon flying like oversized snowflakes to rest, discarded, alongside them on the floor.

Jack waited. She reached inside the box, peeling away the silver and blue onionskin to find nestled among the trappings three picture frames of varying sizes. They were beautiful – exotic and tasteful, stained of the deepest mahogany. Instead of the stock photos of smiling families and Frisbee-catching dogs usually present in new frames, however, the space behind the glass of each of them was blank. She turned them over in her hands and looked at him questioningly.

"You said I didn't have enough pictures," he said quietly. "That a home is not a home without pictures, and I just have that one of Teri."

Renee felt her eyes sting as she remembered the conversation from a month ago, when she'd first started staying over on weekends. Something she'd said out of jest, she realized, had potentially hurt him.

"Jack, I—"

He grabbed her hands. "I want to make a home with you, Renee. I want a life with you, _this_ life with you. No looking back."

She swallowed against the knot of emotion threatening the walls of her defenses. Was this what it was like to cry from happiness? She'd only ever known "to cry," and far less frequently, "happiness," but never the two in tandem. But that was before Jack.

She threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly as she rested her face against his soft sweater. She never wanted to be anywhere else, feel any other way than how she felt right now, and she loved Jack Bauer unlike she'd ever loved anyone, but she said none of those things.

She withdrew, a few tears finally spilling over her lashes and tracking unchecked down the smooth surface of her cheek. She kissed him, sharing one of those tears between them as their faces met. She smiled. "No looking back."


End file.
